Rush To The Tanks: New Warhammer Online Patch

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Mythic have announcified two new careers for Warhammer Online, due to appear this Winter. And they’re beefcake. The Empire’s Knight of the Blazing Sun, and the Dark Elf Black Guard will be available to the game’s current 750,000 players, as part of the first major patch, 1.1. Discussed by Mark Jacobs in his first State Of The Game address, we’ve cobbled together the highlights of the rest of the included updates below.

The Knights of the Blazing Sun are devoted to the cult of Myrmidia, goddess of warfare and protector of civilization. These frontline combatants specialize in Battlefield Commands, using applied tactical knowledge to outmaneuver their enemies and lead their allies to victory.

And here’s the fathead Elf:

Dark Elf Black Guard, on the other hand, care little for tactics or guile. The embodiment of hatred and disdain, they make up the elite of the Witch King’s soldiers. Equipped with the finest armor and sharpest blades, the Black Guard is an indestructible wall of hate against which all foes are crushed.

Mark Jacobs adds some thoughts about them.

“When they were cut from the game launch plans earlier this year, I said that the Black Guard and the Knight would be part of WAR only when they were great and deserved their place alongside all of WAR’s other compelling classes. I also said that we would not charge any additional fees for this new content or put it in a separate expansion pack; that’s not how we operate. We’ve kept to that plan and with the introduction of these two classes, Mythic shows that once again we are happy to keep giving players more value for their subscription dollars than any other MMORPG developer.”

“In 1.1 (and beyond) we will be doing a myriad of things for our RvR players, including improving gear drops, increasing drop rates, and implementing an RvR-influence system to compliment the current PvE-influence system. We will also be giving players more incentive to engage in open RvR by improving the rewards for both assaulting and defending in RvR. WAR is an RvR-centric game and we will continue to do whatever is necessary to encourage people to join in RvR and reward them when they do so.”

Then there’s server transfer options to populate mid-population servers, 14 new quest chains, two new lairs, more Tome unlocks, and then finally career tweaks.

“Almost every career is going to see some changes and love coming their way and there are very, very few changes that will be seen as reductions to a career’s abilities. The Combat and Careers team has spent the last month looking at the changes that they want to make with an eye towards making improvements and buffs, not removing or weakening abilities. I won’t go into details here but the vast majority of careers all have nothing but love coming their way. Of course, we will continue to monitor and track all the class data so expect, like every other MMORPG, changes to the careers to be an ongoing process.”

Sounds like the new changes will be good for encouraging more people to engage in open RvR. Which is good because on my server it’s a rare thing when you see another player out by the keeps. But levelling via PvP is a godsend and increasing the drops will be nice because otherwise you’ll wind up just grinding PvE to make a couple bucks.

Me and compatriot Dante are having a blast with this game at the moment, we’ve never been too hot on MMO’s but this has stolen our attention, and a lot of our time. We took our first Keep a couple of nights ago. It was tough, but the sense of victory and accomplishment was massive. Dynamic stuff.

I’m glad – genuinely – that all of the above posters are enjoying WAR.

I’m not. It isn’t awful by any means, I’m just finding it deeply “meh”. In a world where WoW did not exist it would be really impressive, but that isn’t the world in which we live. Maybe it’s just that I don’t much care about fantasy MMO PvP – if I want to kill other players, I’ll play CoD4.

Dunno, just something about WAR that doesn’t grip me. Maybe because I am quite looking forward to WotLK, or maybe I like being able to mix PvE with PvP/RvR or maybe it’s because I’ve seen this all before in DAoC where they, imo, constantly got as many things wrong as they did right.

Not sure I’m going to sub since, to me, it’s still only half a game with several classes still missing and certain things just don’t click with me. Maybe i’ll see what december brings and see if I’m tempted back.

I’ll take this opportunity to remind people that the official RPS Order guild, Rock Paper Sigmar, is on Tor Anroc and we are awesome. Do a “/who rock” to find out who’s online and ask for an invite! :D

There’s also a Destro guild, Rock Paper Snotling, floating around on Karak Hirn but they smell pretty bad. It’s really no competition ;)

“where they, imo, constantly got as many things wrong as they did right.”

That was exactly what I thought of WAR. I don’t necessarily hate the game, it’s just that so much of it is broken, or not very well designed.

Look at scenarios: You have capture the flag in the middle, and run it to below your spawn; capture the flag in the middle and run it to below your spawn; hold the middle objective; hold the middle objective; capture their flag, but don’t lose yours; as well as capture their flag, but don’t lose yours.

I really, really wanted to like this game, and I do, but for all the wrong reasons. I think the PvE in Warhammer is far, far better than any other MMO I’ve played. The PvP, on the other hand, is the worst case of Rock, Paper, Scissors I’ve ever seen. There’s a 100% chance that class A will beat class B 1 on 1, which has a 100% chance to beat class C 1 on 1, which… and so on. I realise it’s ‘balanced around group combat,’ but when you add direct, world-shattering counters like that, random scenario groups get annihilated. In all the time I played the other MMO I lost two games where we didn’t ever kill anyone on the other team. In four years. And both of those were before the expansion, when the Alliance had all Tier 3 gear, and we had HWL shoulders.

In my first week of Warhammer I’d seen three 0-500 losses, six 8-500 losses, and 14 50~-500 losses. As a tank, my duty seems to be to help weaker classes survive 3 seconds longer when the RDPS focus target them. And I get less renown, as a tank, because I don’t do a lot of damage, or healing.

I’m almost always a support class, but I find tanks in this game are simply annoyances, and most of the time, would be better replaced by DPS of any kind.

So yes, I find WAR a weird thing, because it delivers the opposite of what I wanted, but it does have it’s fun moments. And as much as I hate people who do this, I think I’m going to post-pone playing until some serious patches to go in. Constantly evading enemies, snare-a-rific RvR, memory leaks, waiting through the four logos when I log on every time (I know, but it’s still annoying), the inability to actually turn off my cloak/helmet, constant graphical glitches (being incased in stone — forever!), quests that you can’t turn in, zones that don’t change sides even though they should, the fact that the team with the most healers wins every single Scenario I’ve ever played… and the list goes on.

“I also said that we would not charge any additional fees for this new content or put it in a separate expansion pack; that’s not how we operate. We’ve kept to that plan and with the introduction of these two classes, Mythic shows that once again we are happy to keep giving players more value for their subscription dollars than any other MMORPG developer.”

Except Cryptic with City of Heroes, who also do this. Issue 13 in closed beta, issue 14 coming out early next year!

Ahem.

I really want to play this. Why is there so much good stuff out there? Curse my limited budget!

I do love this game, but i had to stop playing. I am currently unemployed, and i don’t want to spend the next 6 months on the dole, at the computer, in last weeks underwear. luckily i start my new job next week, huzzah for WAR!

@Carra: What did you want to use your numpad keys for? I’ve got mine replacing my 1-9 bar so that I can play two-handed without a mouse as Age of Conan has instilled in me.

As for WAR – I love the game. There’s something strangely compelling about a game that doesn’t require change. In CoX I was trying to finish storylines, in WoW I was trying to see new areas, in EvE I wanted (usually) better ships, and in AoC I wanted them to stop nerfing me every week (cheap shot, yeah).

But in WAR… a simple desire to kill my fellow players and, for lack of a better phrase, other stuff, is what fuels me. I love pouncing on sniveling Order players and turning them into mincemeat, even if I die five times in a row afterwards. I also thoroughly enjoy the PQs, which basically require me to be anti-social. And I get sweet loot for both activities!

Of course, despite my love for it, I do find myself playing Combat Arms an awful lot in lieu of WAR. Hmm.

I was impressed by many of War’s good ideas, and could live with the uninspired presentation (truth be told I missed the wow ‘ghey’) but at the end of the day I just don’t think I like games with levelling mechanics.

I don’t like that, even though the rank normalisation gives you slightly more survivability, higher level characters can stomp all over you. The tier bracketing system doesn’t help imho, because then you just get a few levels where you can be competitive at the middle of the level range, and as soon as you go over the max level for your current tier your back to being handicapped by your level, except with ever further to go to ‘catch-up’ than you had before due to the levels getting longer and longer and longer.

I also felt a lot of the public quests were broken in that if you got enough players to together to kill the boss the initial stages became a chore because the mobs spawned so slowly that “killing 100 x’s” turned into mainly waiting around for something to kill.

The latter complaint is something I’m sure they will tweak, but the former is probably just a feature of levelling games, which in all fairness I think I just don’t like.

Also I loved WOW’s instances, and found it to hard to get a group to try WAR’s.

That said I think WAR comes closer to being something I could play than other MMPORGS, so that’s something.

In spite of its problems, I get a kick out of WAR. I’m really pleased to see that Order is getting a tank-ish type. On my server (Chaos Wastes), Order is filled with Legolases and Witch Hunters, and we are bereft of people armed with a degree of substance.

Been playing for almost a week now. I love PQ/Tome and “OW MY EYE” title :D
Fan of the Public Quests but it seems some PQs get played to death and others are ignored because they are out of the way.
The lack of XRoads chatter was weird at 1st, but since they added the Region channel it seems more active, which is good.
I was getting spammed the **** out today, they really need to fix that shit.

I really wanted more… I’m not sure, substance to the PvP in Warhammer. I find it really comes down to pressing one or two abilities. I realise games like the other fantasy MMO also share this, but in that game I’ll use 10-12 abilities per fight. In Warhammer, I use about four (as a Chosen – snare, damage, knockback, morale ability). I’ve tried using all of them, but the DoT attack is useless (due to the abundance of HoT’s) and I cannot, ever, kill a healer 1 v 1. Ever. And that pisses me off.

It’d be great to see something of a regular feature on the state of the two RPS guilds in WAR. The Disorder guild is quite quiet at the moment whereas the Order guild seems to be quite busy. (Just an opinion, it’s quite likely I’ve just missed all the people-traffic.)

Incidentally, as some of the owner-types might read this, we’ve got a few minor issues with Guild leadership, such as there never being a boss figure on. Any chance one of you fine people could please head to the guild forums and share some thoughts?

I’m with those who love WAR. I think it exceeds WoW (which I played for a long time) in every category I can think of except Instances, which I don’t care too much about given the other aspects of the game.

I don’t think I’ll be buying WotLK now that I’m playing this. I don’t see myself returning to WoW. The KOTOR MMO, on the other hand…ah, so many games so little subscription money!